In a sense, Jessica Barry, School of Advertising Art president and owner, tells the school’s story through her career. In 1997, at the age of 19, Barry graduated from SAA and went on to more than 16 years of art direction work and plenty of awards for local advertising and marketing jobs.
“I came back for an alumni event and just never left,” Barry said.
In 2007, Barry and others (including Matt Flick, SAA vice president, creative director and instructor) found themselves in leadership roles at the two-year school. By August 2013, Barry owned the school, having purchased it from founder Tim Potter.
“I look back, even over the last 10 years, at how the need in the industry has grown,” she said. “We’ve gone from 90 percent job placement to 100 percent job placement in the last couple of years.”
Today, SAA has 132 students. Graphic Design USA magazine named SAA one of its 2015 top design schools in its March-April 2015 issue — in a group that includes luminaries like the Yale School of Art and Carnegie Mellon School of Design.
We recently sat down in Barry’s very colorful office to talk about this and more. This is edited and condensed.
Q: Your school opened in a very different world. How has its mission changed?
Barry: "Obviously, it has changed completely. Eight years ago, we made the biggest change. We went from being a school where you're just learning to create traditional print advertising — like magazine ads and brochures and logos. We changed the program to focus on training the students to become hybrid designers. A hybrid designer to us is a student who is very well trained in print and digital web advertising. But they also have skills in photography, video and motion and illustration.
“So they (students) are very much more well rounded. And within that curriculum too, they’re taking marketing courses, they’re taking communications and presentation. We even added a business course.
“So I think a graphic designer now is expected to work with a client, learn about their problem and solve their problem in a much different way than what they were expected to do in 1983.”
Q: It sounds like there are more demands today.
Barry: "I would say so, too. I would say technology has made it so much more complicated. So there's more technically to learn. Our students back in 1983 were doing a lot of things by hand. Now, they're expected obviously to create everything digitally. But they're also expected to code a web site. And to think about UX (user experience) and how apps work.
“So it has changed and become much more complex. We have really close relationships with the employers, so we have lots of feedback from them on how our grads are performing. And now that we are beyond our 30th year, we have grads who are in leadership levels.”
Q: So a newspaper reporter’s question might be: Is print still in the mix?
Barry: "It is. It is still in the mix. There are still many employers who need print design.
“We were just talking about this: Our students are getting ready to go out on internships in their second year. Out of all the employers — there are about 60 (participating) employers — only three did not designate that web was most important. I would say the (top three desired skills) are web, creative thinking and problem solving and communication skills. Can they work with a client? Can they sell their ideas? Those are probably the top three. …
“When you compare our program to other schools, this is like the junior and senior year at a four-year institution. You’re jumping right in to the actual focus of your major.”
Know someone who can handle Three Questions? We're looking for behind-the-scenes-but-still fascinating Miami Valley residents with something to say. Send your suggestions to tom.gnau@coxinc.com.
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